Art of the Piano: Sir Stephen Hough

Sir Stephen Hough brings to the Art of the Piano a recital built around the idea of the Klavierstück, the short piano piece in its many forms. From Schubert and Brahms, where the miniature becomes concentrated lyricism, to Schoenberg and Stockhausen, where it turns inward, compressed, and experimental, the program traces how composers used brevity to achieve striking freedom and intensity. At its center stands Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, expanding that same keyboard imagination onto a monumental scale, while Schumann’s Carnaval transforms the miniature into a sequence of vivid character pieces. The evening closes with Hough’s own arrangement of a Mary Poppins suite, adding a final note of wit and charm. A MacArthur Fellow as well as a celebrated pianist, composer, and writer, Hough has been praised by The Arts Desk for combining “open-hearted virtuosity” with “a sense of an inner world beyond the notes.”